Internet and Computing

Tyler Cowen suggests that there are few private gains from producing content on Twitter:

In my portrait Twitter consists mainly of social benefits yet it offers few private gains for many generators of the content. So why do so many people do it? Maybe it tricks our instincts for sociability or connection.

Sociability is certainly a major benefit and I wouldn’t consider it a “trick.” Sure many tweets are about trivial things, but so are many real world conversations. I like Clive Thompson’s description of this as “social proprioception.”

However the social aspects of Twitter have seemed to decline in importance over the past year with a greater emphasis on pointing to content elsewhere; I now find nearly as many useful links in my Twitter feed as I do in my RSS reader. So why actively tweet instead of passively taking it all in? I get a few selfish benefits from publishing on the site:

Driving traffic — I no longer count on a blog post to get traffic on its own. My number of subscribers on Google Reader has languished around 160 for months while in a little over a year I’ve picked up more than 550 followers on Twitter. Today if I want a post to get attention I link to it on Twitter and Facebook. (This begs the question of whether blogging itself offers benefits, which I talk about here.)

Attracting customers — I work in a bar. I make money by getting people into that bar. Twitter lets me tell people about new drinks, promote events, and just generally draw attention to the place. It also raises the profile of the bar outside of Portland, making it more likely that out of town visitors will stop in.

Reminding people that I exist — That’s weird to say, but it’s important. When people are deciding whom to invite to events, send samples to, or hire for a gig, being active on Twitter helps ensure they’re keeping me in mind.

Crowd-sourcing — Tyler says he hasn’t learned how to ask for advice on Twitter very well, but it’s easy: Don’t ask stupid (i.e. easily Googleable) questions and don’t ask too many of them. I’ve used it to source good restaurants, my bike bag, cooking and mixology tips, and other things. Of course to get advice you need followers, which means it’s a return on being active.

Meeting new people — Twitter has been a surprisingly good medium for getting to know people that I might have met otherwise but probably wouldn’t have. And after months of following them on Twitter I know them far better than I would from exchanging a few emails. This is a great benefit when we finally meet in person.

New York Times tech columnist David Pogue is, surprisingly, new to Twitter. He’s written a column about it that provides a good description of what it’s like to use the potentially bewildering service. It’s worth a look if you’re considering signing up. I liked this bit about how bottom-up spontaneous order turned a very basic application into a wonderful network:

In fact, [founder Evan] Williams said that a huge chunk of Twitter lore, etiquette and even terminology has sprouted up from Twitter users without any input from the company. For example, the people came up with the term “tweets” (what everyone calls the messages). The crowd began referring to fellow Twitterers by name like this: @pogue. Soon, that notation became a standard shorthand that the Twitter software now recognizes. The masses also came up with conventions like “RT,” meaning re-tweet — you’re passing along what someone else said on Twitter.

Pogue also says that I have no life:

Nobody has the time to read all the tweets from more than about 30 people — at least, nobody with a life.

Hey, I follow 149 people and I at least skim all of their updates. On the other hand, I’m terribly underemployed right now and stayed up till 4 am last night reading comic books, so maybe he has a point.

But seriously, scanning through Twitter doesn’t take that long and it’s a key part of my morning routine, which usually goes something like: Check email, brew coffee, scan Twitter, go through my RSS feeds, open news websites, and finally sort my Firefox tabs. Twitter is an effective way to get rapidly up to speed on what my friends are doing and what’s going on in the world.

An interesting side effect of being on the West Coast is how my feed changes throughout the day. It starts out very political with lots of updates from DC friends, who still make up the bulk of my contacts. By early evening here they’re closing down for the night or posting drunken tweets. By late night the politics are gone and it’s just my non-political food and drink friends from Europe and the West Coast posting updates. By morning it’s back to heavy politics from the East Coast crew who’ve been up for hours ahead of me.

I would add one more rule to what Pogue suggests: If you have a blog, don’t link every post in your Twitter feed. An occasional highlight is fine, but anyone tech-savvy enough to be on Twitter has probably mastered RSS. They’ll follow your blog if they want to.

By the way, I am @jacobgrier on Twitter if you’d like to follow for faster, briefer content like what you see on this blog, along with random personal updates.

[Hat tip to Maureen Ogle, who needs to stop writing about Twitter and just join it already! Even if only as an experiment.]

Previously:
Organizational tweeting
Faking it